Biennale Danza 2024: the winners of the calls for new choreographies

The winners have been selected in the calls for new choreographies by the Biennale Danza for choreographic projects by Italian and foreign artists under the age of 35. Two Italian companies have been selected for the national call: Miller de Nobili (MdN), more specifically Maria Chiara de Nobili and Alexander Miller, and Vidavè, the partnership between Noemi Dalla Vecchia and Matteo Vignali. The winner of the international call is Melisa Zulberti from Argentina. The three selected projects, original and yet to be performed, selected from the over 350 submissions received, will premiere on the stages of Biennale Danza 2024 (18 July > 3 August).

Now in its third year, this initiative is part of the long-term project of commissions and co-commissions by the Dance Department of La Biennale di Venezia – directed by Wayne McGregor – which allocates resources for choreographic creations by the new generations.

As Wayne McGregor writes in the motivations for the selection of the artists:

“Argentinian director, visual artist, installation specialist and contemporary dancer Melisa Zulberti challenges convention with her multi-dimensional and socially conscious body of work. In her thrilling new interdisciplinary project designed specifically for Biennale Danza 2024, nine dancers suspended mid-air, alongside a closed-circuit set of live cameras, generate a daring audio-visual ecosystem. Zulberti posits her work at a moment in history where creating strong bonds with one another, situating ourselves in a community and acting from within one seems more urgent than ever.

The newly minted and creative collective Miller De Nobili (MdN) shares a vision that seamlessly blends breaking, contemporary and urban dance theatre with acting techniques to produce intriguing and emotionally charged works. With There Was Still Time the dynamic partnership riffs off the seminal work of Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot to explore an unconventional combination of physical forms and existentialist dread.

In folklore dynamics Noemi Dalla Vecchia and Matteo Vignali (Vidavè) analyse stories, proverbs, games, superstitions and gestures of many of the most present Italian dialects, to make the beauty of the Italian folklore take form through movement. Mining the past to embody a poetic cultural legacy, folklore dynamics attempts to find equivalencies between words and danced phrases, between the verbal and the non-verbal and perhaps between the said and the (un)said”.

Melisa Zulberti (Tandil – Argentina, 1989) is a director, stage designer, choreographer and visual artist, who studied at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes in Buenos Aires and at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Her projects and research are oriented towards the interconnection between different languages and aesthetics.
Her most renowned works include: Over Itself, The Bodies’ Continuity, Inside, Everything Inside, Two hours in traffic, Essay on an indolent present, Transit station, Under.
Her projects have been presented in festivals, exhibitions, cultural spaces and museums, including: Bienal de São Paulo (Brazil); La Juan Gallery, Zapadores Museum, Ciudad del Arte, Nuevo Proyecto de la Neomudéjar, Medialab Prado, Mutuo Art Gallery, Festival Paraiso (Spain); Paris Fashion week (France); FIBA, the International Festival of Buenos Aires, Teatro San Martín, MUMBAT, Museo MAR, Materia Prima, MAPA Feria de artes, Buenos Aires Fashion Week, Bienal de Arte Joven, Centro Cultural San Martín, Artlab, Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti, Fundación Proa and PROA21 (Argentina). Among the acknowledgments she has received: the Beca Movilidad by the National Fund from the Fondo Argentino de Desarrollo Cultura y Creativo, which included a residency alongside the Secretary of Culture of Rio de Janeiro/FUNARJ/NGO People’s Place Project, Brazil; the Estímulo de Performance Award from the Colección Brun Cattaneo. She participated in the Marco Arte Foco residency at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Boca (Buenos Aires) within the framework of the 2019 Artists Program. She also received support from the National Theatre Institute. Her project All of this, infinite times was selected by the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes René Brusau in Chaco (Argentina). Her project The Bodies’ Continuity was selected among the 84 highest-rated projects at the Premio Itaú Artes Visuales.

Miller de Nobili (MdN) is a Dresden based company established as an artistic collaboration between Maria Chiara de’ Nobili (Naples, 1995) and Alexander Miller (Rudny/Kazakhstan, 1989). Connected by a shared vision, they aspire to develop a platform that seamlessly integrates their joint passions for breaking, contemporary and urban dance theater, alongside acting techniques. Their debut collaboration Momento earned the Scapino Ballet’s Production Prize at the 35^th Choreography Competition in Hannover. Driven by their dedication to innovation, virtuosity, and careful attention to detail, the Miller de Nobili company steadily gained recognition and success through a series of captivating creations. Their first work PACK was premiered in September 2021 at the “Dancing About” festival and later at the TanzplattForm Deutschland 2022. Clouds for tomorrow premiered in 2022 at the PACT Zollverein (atelier no. 66), then at Tanzplattform Bern, at the Tanz Labor Ulm and the 36^th Choreographic Competition in Hannover. In the same year, MdN created Stay, produced by SILK Fluegge & Pottporus e.V., as well as Up the slippery slope for Think Big 2022, with the support of the Staatsballett Hannover. In November 2022, MdN premiered Don’t you dare!, co-produced by Hellerau – European Centre for the Arts. MdN participated in the Rotterdam International Choreography Competition (RIDCC) with their latest creation Until Again; that same year, they choreographed a new creation titled Song of the Dark Forest for the Scapino Ballet in Rotterdam. The upcoming creation, to be completed in 2024, will be developed through a series of artistic residencies in collaboration with international institutions such as AGORA of Montpellier Danse, Teatros del Canal in Madrid and Residenzzentrum Tanz+ in Baden.

VIDAVÈ (2020) began as a choreographic project by the duo Vignali and Dalla Vecchia, dancers who have always been dedicated to hybridizing the languages of street dance and the aesthetics and languages of contemporary dance. Matteo Vignali (Perugia 1993) began as a street dancer, furthering his technical and choreographic studies at the Bounce Factory Roma, Hyper Week Catania, IDance Camp Roma and the Juste Debout Summer School in Paris, through 2018. At the same time, he was introduced to theatre with the The Clouds/Botega company, and to the commercial environment with the choreographers Mecnun Giasar, Aaron Sillis and Giuliano Peparini, through 2021. He discovered movement analysis with the Laban Bartenieff Movement System, attending the degree programme that will designate him as a certified analyst in 2024. Noemi Dalla Vecchia (Lecco, 1997), completed her prevalently academic studies at the Opus Ballet Firenze in 2014, then explored contemporary languages with Jiry Pokorny, Ivan Perez, Metamorphosis, Hofesh Schechter and others, in addition to hip hop choreography and dancehall through 2021. She has danced for Alessia Gatta’s company Ritmi Sotterranei and for Erika Silgoner’s ESKLAN in several productions between 2015 and 2020, and collaborated with Alessandra Valenti and Luca Tommassini in television productions. In 2021 they attended the Next Generation Choreographers course by AterBalletto and in 2023 the Pioneer Project at the Korzo Theater. They are associated artists at the Centro Nazionale di Produzione DANCEHAUSpiù and have collaborated since 2022 with Movimento Danza Organismo by Produzione Nazionale. They have won acknowledgments such as the ADEB Udine 2021 award, a special mention at Theodor Rawyler 2021, the Prospettiva Danza Teatro 2021 award, second prize at the Linkage Choreographic Competition 2022, the Residanza 2022 prize, and were finalists at Tanzplattform Bern 2022 and the SoloTanz Festival 2023. They have been selected several times by Network Anticorpi XL and participated in many Italian and European festivals from 2020 to 2023, the year in which they began the Spoken Dance production, a container of pièces with which they are seeking to define solid instruments to support their choreographic aesthetic.